When Murdoch and then Post editor
James Brady launched Page Six on Janu-
ary 3, 1977, it was indeed the sixth page
of the paper and the first gossip column
to operate as a section—not attached to
a single columnist, like those written by
legendary gossips Walter Winchell and
Hedda Hopper.
The mandate was to cover “the corri-
dors of power.” Competitors came and
went, but the 1990s and early 2000s
brought a gossip gold rush. One former
Page Six staffer says of those days, “When
you were at Page Six, the club owners
would meet you at the door and hand you
an eight ball—it was insane.”
In addition to Page Six, there was Rush
& Molloy (a husband-and-wife duo of for-
mer Page Six staffers), which launched
at the Daily News in 1995. New York mag-
azine had Intelligencer. Esquire (until
1997) and The New York Times had gossip
columns. But in a 1994 New York rank-
ing, Page Six topped everyone: “Page Six
rests easy at the top of the gossip pile; in
terms of performance, prestige and in-
fluence, it’s New York’s consensus No. 1
column. And the bitchiest.”
Page Six itself—the actual newspaper
column—looks almost exactly as it always
has. There’s still a story that stretches
across the top of the page: “the lede.”
There’s still a two-column-wide item at the
bottom right: “the double.” The fonts are
the same. Every name is bolded, except
those of the dead. There are recurring
features like Sightings, which are quick
hits revealing where celebrities have been
spotted around town; We Hear, events
that celebrities are expected to attend;
and blind items, pieces of gossip with no
name attached, often for legal reasons. (In
December, a blind item disclosed that an
unnamed A-list actor had been sending
dick pics to couples in hopes of interest-
ing them in a threesome.)
Reporting methods are mostly the same,
too. Page Six has an extensive network of
tipsters, sources, verifiers, and helpers.
“We rely on our sources more than report-
ers from other areas of the paper. Often it’s
the source that gives rise to the story rather
than the event itself,” says Johnson.
In a media environment that prioritizes
gaming algorithms to bloat website vis-
its, Page Six reporters still do things the
old-fashioned way, spending most nights
at events, parties, and dinners cultivating
sources, and days working the phones to
verify tips. About 24 million people per
month read PageSix.com, while 170,000
people read the Post in print and about
200,000 read the Post daily on the app.
Brady, who represents clients including
Mortimer and Patti Stanger. “I’m always
like, Fuck, it’s Page Six. My heart jumps
out of my skin, always. I’m like, Oh my
God, what did my client do?”hen something salacious
happens in the city, odds are
someone from the Page Six
ecosystem saw it or heard
about it—and is itching to be
the one to get the satisfying
thrill of sharing it.
“Okay, you can out me
as a gossip! I’m a Page Six
helper,” says R. Couri Hay, an
owner of a public-relations firm who has
been working with the column since its in-
ception. He says he was the one who gave
Page Six one of its most famous blind items
ever, about Woody Allen dating Soon-Yi Pre-
vin in the early 1990s, after hearing it from
Mia Farrow’s mother, Maureen O’Sullivan.
(Former Page Six editor Joanna Molloy has
told a different story.) “The reality is, I love
to gossip. I was born to gossip! I hear a lot.
I have information every single day. Call me
an adrenaline seeker—I guess some people
feel like this when they skydive.”
Hay goes to two or three parties a night,
five or six nights a week, and calls his Page
Six contacts almost daily. Before he even
brushes his teeth, Hay grabs his Post to see
if one of his items made the cut. “Just today,
I woke up and found a couple,” he says.
The ultimate rush comes when he gets “the
wood”—tabloid-speak for the front page of
the paper, where Hay’s items have landed
a few times (according to him).
Hay isn’t paid for his tips—Page Six
doesn’t pay sources. However, his gossip
prowess is useful in his PR business. “Over
the years, I’ve been a partner with different
nightclubs,” he says. “I remember Kim Kar-
dashian wouldn’t get out of the car—I guess
I can tell this story now; it’s ten, fifteen yearsHenry Schleiff, group president at the
media company Discovery, reads his Post
on the treadmill while he watches CNN.
“I savor Page Six as my dessert,” he says,
marveling at the quality of reporting in
the column. “One could argue they’re
Woodward and Bernstein on speed.”
For publicists, getting a client in bold
can change their trajectory—shine a light
on an up-and-comer or help shape the nar-
rative about a celebrity. In the pre-Internet
days, each morning, editors at glossy mag-
azines would get a photocopied packet
of the day’s gossip, culled by editorial as-
sistants from the New York tabloids and
trades and delivered to their desks—fodder
that could turn into a bigger story. Today,
a Page Six exclusive is often rewritten by
dozens of other sites—you’ll find Page Six
citations everywhere from Cosmopolitan to
The Source to The New Yorker.
“I recently had a conversation with the
editor at a magazine, and he was telling
me they wait for us to do the story first be-
cause they’re scared to do it or they won’t
do it,” Page Six executive editor Ian Mohr
says. “Then they jump on it as a feature. I
see that all the time.”
Page Six reporters have shown an un-
canny ability to identify interesting char-
acters, then cover them obsessively until
they become first “Page Six famous” and
then actual celebrities. New York socialites
Paris Hilton and Tinsley Mortimer were
Page Six staples—every table dance and
club altercation was covered—before they
became reality-TV stars. Other times it’s
serendipitous. Page Six covered Timothée
Chalamet in 2013, when he was a teenager
dating Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon
at Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School
who’d had a bit part on Homeland.
And yet getting a call from Page Six
will send a chill down a publicist’s spine.
“It’s usually a no-number—so it’s a private
number—and I panic,” says publicist KellyEMILY SMITH (FAR LEFT, WITH REPORTER VICKY
WARD) REPLACED RICHARD JOHNSON (ABOVE,
WITH DONALD AND MELANIA TRUMP AND KATIE
COURIC) AS PAGE SIX EDITOR IN 2010.